


i get it’s bittersweet, but this is what we need

by immortalcockroach (juggyjones)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Pining, but also Friends to Enemies to Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21848725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juggyjones/pseuds/immortalcockroach
Summary: ‘So…that’s it? That’s the end?’‘Yeah.’‘Are you not going to fight for it?’‘What’s the point, really?’‘So you’re just giving up?’Clarke doesn’t cry. Her thoughts race back to everything that happened, and she knows the answer. It hurts, but the truth always does.‘He gave up first.’---or, how bellamy and clarke's feelings make them fall apart and get back together again.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Clarke Griffin & Raven Reyes
Comments: 13
Kudos: 102





	i get it’s bittersweet, but this is what we need

**Author's Note:**

> it's the annual new year's eve fic, and this time, it's based on a true story! (first half)

‘So…that’s it? That’s the end?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you not going to fight for it?’

‘What’s the point, really?’

‘So you’re just giving up?’

Clarke doesn’t cry. Her thoughts race back to everything that happened, and she knows the answer. It hurts, but the truth always does.

‘He gave up first.’

* * *

Clarke and Bellamy’s friendship began as the greatest friendships always do – accidentally, through a mutual friend, accompanied by a lot of alcohol. She met Bellamy when he was drunk and she was sober, and if it wasn’t for making him add her on Snapchat, they probably wouldn’t have talked again at all.

This way, she woke up to a chat message from him, asking who she is. Later, she found out that he remembered everything that happened the night before, but was too embarrassed to admit he did. She would’ve done the same if she spent two hours ranting to a random girl about an ex named Gina.

They started talking, a little bit. She was friends with one of his flatmates, Jasper, so she was over quite often. He made friends with Raven, too, who was her flatmate.

It wasn’t long until they were all friends – Bellamy, Clarke, and Raven as the core of the group; Jasper and Monty, both Bellamy’s flatmates, who’d join them from time to time; Luna, Finn, Murphy, and Emori, who’d always be there for the night outs but always disappear at different points. It was a big group of people who liked each other enough to stick together at least once a week, and Clarke liked it.

They all liked it.

Until months went by, and they fell apart.

* * *

‘What do you mean, he gave up first?’

Raven comes back with two mug and some biscuits. The room begins to smell like ginger and Clarke takes a big sip out of her mug, welcoming the bittersweet taste. Her cheeks still ache from the inside and her breath is uneven, with the tiniest of hiccups, but at least her vision isn’t blurry anymore. She is shaking, a little, and she is a bit cold, but Raven already got her a blanket.

A blanket, some biscuits, and a warm cup of tea – she could never thank Raven enough.

‘We talked,’ says Clarke. ‘Barely. He didn’t–he said he doesn’t see a point in us being friends anymore.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Yeah.’

Both of them are quiet for a while. The only thing filling the silence is the fireplace at Sinclair’s, fire cracking enough to keep Clarke at a steady level of drowsiness.

Enough to keep her from giving in to the hurt.

* * *

At the beginning of the second semester, a part of their group—Raven, Clarke, Bellamy, Jasper, Monty, and Murphy—moved into a flat together. Murphy was independent, more out of the flat than in it, and Jasper and Monty became a unit that would be present or gone together. Raven, Clarke, and Bellamy were a unit, too – until things went south.

It began with Raven ending up with Finn, entering something that was pretty much a relationship. This changed the dynamic of the whole group, and Bellamy started closing off. That was the thing with them – Bellamy didn’t have anyone, Clarke didn’t have anyone, and Raven didn’t have anyone. Jasper and Monty pretty much had each other, and Murphy wasn’t close enough.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to go out with us?’ Clarke recalls asking Bellamy at the beginning of the semester.

‘I have to study,’ he replied.

He didn’t go out with them after that.

* * *

‘He said he didn’t feel like we were friends anymore.’ Clarke’s voice is quiet and distant even to her.

It’s the fire in March that distracts her. Spring break, the last one before exams, the last one before _he_ leaves _._ The fire cracks on, and so should her life.

Raven takes hold of one of her hands, drawing her attention away from the window. Her lips are curled into a sympathetic smile and her face is soft, but sad.

Clarke missed hanging out with her.

‘You were the only one he had, Clarke, and he only had you because you loved him too much to let go.’

The blonde’s lips tremble; a shaky breath passes them, but no more. She can’t cry. Not anymore, or not yet.

Truth hurts.

More than anyone, it’s Raven who understands it best. She was the first one to lose him, after all.

* * *

Finn cheated on Raven and Bellamy put the blame on her. It was the middle of the second semester of the second year, and it was the noticeable beginning of the end, too.

‘I warned you he’d do that,’ Bellamy said to Raven, in their living room, the morning after she was crying her eyes out in the same spot. ‘I told you that you shouldn’t get involved with him.’

‘But you say that about everyone,’ countered Raven.

Clarke knew she was right, and she still knows it. Bellamy never thought anyone to be good enough for the three of them – there was always something wrong. And Finn, he was never Bellamy’s favourite. He tolerated him as a friend for night outs and that’s where it stopped.

‘That’s because it’s true,’ Bellamy replied. ‘I just state the facts. You guys are the ones who choose to ignore them and then come crying when you get hurt.’

Raven was sitting on the couch, Clarke remembers vividly, legs crossed over. Bellamy was sitting at the table, on one of the bar stools, and Clarke was standing in the kitchen, cooking, with her back turned to the two.

If she had joined the conversation, she would’ve needed to pick a side.

She knew which side she’d pick, and she didn’t want to, because deep down, it already began to feel wrong.

So Bellamy ate his sandwich and Raven said to him: ‘You think you know everything.’

And Bellamy replied: ‘I do.’

‘So it’s my own fault he cheated?’

Clarke turned around, just in time to see Bellamy shrug. His tousled black curls bounced a little, and she watched Raven’s face turn into a silent rage.

‘You knew what you were getting yourself into, with someone like him. It’s your fault you stooped so low, had so little self-respect that you thought you could—’

‘ _Enough_.’

Raven got up from the couch and walked over, pointing a finger at Bellamy’s chest. Clarke couldn’t see Bellamy’s face, and she knew she didn’t want to. He doesn’t like being touched, or threatened, or Raven, really.

Clarke wondered when she realised that. She also wondered when he stopped liking her.

‘I’ve had enough of your self-respect bullshit. You know what’s self-respect? _This_ , right here, me standing up to my friend and telling him he can fuck off if that’s what he genuinely believes.’

Raven took a breath, and Clarke was surprised Bellamy kept quiet. He always had so much to say.

‘I’m done being treated like shit because I decided to do something that doesn’t go along with your morals. I liked Finn and yes, that was my fault, but that’s where it ends. It’s not my fault he was a lying piece of shit. It’s also not my fault that you’re so far up your own ass. You’ve been an asshole to me since the beginning of the semester and I don’t know why, but I’m done.’

And she was. That was the last time they spoke more than anything required from flatmates.

And that was the last time Clarke believed things weren’t going to change.

* * *

‘You remember how often you’d deny being in love with him, then come to me and say you are?’

Not too long ago, hearing this sentence would make her smile. Again, truth hurts. There are days when she feels like the worst thing to happen to her was being in love with Bellamy – someone who could never love her back.

She doesn’t think he could love, period.

‘I do,’ she admits. ‘I was trying to fool myself into believing I’m over him.’

Raven nods. ‘It was only hurting you. You’d always lie to yourself, over the simplest of things.’

‘Isn’t life easier to bear when you live in a reality you can control?’

‘No,’ says Raven, ‘because you end up like Bellamy. Not seeing the truth, only what you believe, and you lose everyone you care about.’

‘He doesn’t care—’

‘ _Clarke_. You can’t look me in the eye and tell me you believe he never cared about any of us. About _you_.’

The way Raven says “you” makes Clarke shiver. Her legs are in the position Raven’s were the day she and Bellamy stopped being friends, and it takes her back. She wonders if this was the way Raven was feeling. Even though she doesn’t truly know what it is that she’s feeling – betrayal? Disbelief? _Relief_?

Maybe all of those, and a little bit more.

* * *

When Bellamy lost Raven, he lost nearly everyone else, too. People were fed up with the way he had been acting – closed off, brooding and moody, blaming everyone for things they weren’t responsible for. Creating issues that needed to be discussed. Raven might’ve been the one to had a proper, shouting fallout with him, but everyone felt the same way.

Clarke knew because Raven told her, because she asked. Bellamy never asked.

There was a point where Clarke started to wonder if he even cared.

People didn’t give up on him. Monty and Jasper would invite him to play video games with them, just like he’d previously sit around and moan about videogames while secretly liking them, but he’d refuse. Echo would ask him to go clubbing with her and some friends. Roan would ask if he wants a gym buddy, but Bellamy said he does better at the gym if he goes alone.

With time, people stopped asking, because they realised the answer would always be no. By the middle of the second semester, it was only him and Clarke.

She thought they were good. That they were the ones meant to last, because they’d already been through so much shit. Because he still stuck to her.

Well, her and Murphy, as much as it was to be believed.

* * *

‘You weren’t friends by the end,’ Raven says, ‘Not really.’

‘I know. I figured that out, at some point.’ Clarke fiddles with her hands in her lap, wondering if her hands will ever feel the same knowing she’ll never touch him again. ‘I tried to make myself believe it wasn’t true.’

‘As you do,’ Raven says, and that _is true._

Clarke looks at Raven. There is a lot holding her back—shatters of her and Bellamy, her messed up relationship with her family, the fact that she lost nearly all her friends because she only focused on Bellamy—but she smiles. It’s a broken smile, though, where eyes are in pain and the lips can’t hide it.

‘I couldn’t—’ Her voice cracks, and she coughs, and smiles even wider. It hurts. ‘I couldn’t let him go.’

Fingers come between Clarke’s and Raven takes her hands in hers. She comes in front of her and sits on the floor, smiling up at the blonde for whom everything is too blurry to see.

Clarke wishes she wouldn’t cry. She frees a hand from Raven and holds it over her mouth, hoping it would muffle her cries – but it doesn’t.

Nothing does.

* * *

Bellamy and Murphy got close at the beginning of the second semester, but Clarke somehow missed it. She’d start hearing Bellamy’s voice coming from Murphy’s room at odd hours of the night, or Murphy banging on Bellamy’s door until he goes out and they go to the gym together. Bellamy still making meals with Clarke, but Murphy sticking around in the kitchen and chatting to the two of them.

The two of them, but only Bellamy.

Clarke started noticing it when it was just the three of them. The emptiness of other people’s presence was filled with Murphy’s loudness, and she began to resent him for it.

Murphy never really liked her. They understood each other; they were quite similar in a lot of aspects, in fact. Clarke always thought that was their main issue. But Bellamy started hanging out with Murphy and Clarke started feeling replaced.

It was fine. She was dealing with it. She was trying to be happy for Bellamy to have someone else, too, when she had Raven.

It _was_ fine. Until they started bickering.

Clarke liked boys and she liked girls, too, and Bellamy didn’t like that she liked anybody. He’d insult each and every single one of them, and he’d tell her sex is all she can think about. He’d look down on her, sometimes, and she’d hear Murphy snigger in the background.

They fought. And then they were okay. And then they fought some more.

Some days were good. Others were hell.

There was no end in sight.

* * *

‘I’ll never forget one of the worst times you fought.’

Now, Raven is sitting on the couch, too, and Clarke’s head is in her lap. All she can think about is to _breathe_ and not let go; to remember that while she may be hurting now, life is not going to get worse.

It feels nice to be here, with Raven. It almost makes her think that, for the past few months, she couldn’t breathe at all.

‘You phoned me and asked to come over. I was in your room when you told me what happened the night before. It was the screaming match, remember?’

Clarke swallows. Her throat is dry and it hurts. ‘As if I could ever forget.’

‘You then went to apologise, and when you came back into the room—’

‘I broke down.’

Raven nods. ‘You _fell apart_.’

* * *

For them, this was the culmination of their bickering and the beginning of their downfall. It was mid-semester, not even a month ago, on their way to a party Clarke had been invited to. Clarke and Echo, with Bellamy and Murphy tagging along.

At this point, Bellamy had already begun acting distant from everyone but Murphy, but Clarke was still in the stage of heavily denying it – or not noticing it all. They walked in pairs, in the dead of the night, to a house of people they only vaguely knew.

Bellamy and Murphy were chatting, and Bellamy was being snidey, so Clarke flipped him off. He fired back, and so did she, and before she knew it they were screaming bloody murder at each other in the middle of the street.

‘I’m going home,’ Bellamy said.

‘I don’t give a fuck,’ Clarke replied.

She did. She gave way too many fucks, but she couldn’t let him have this one, because she was tipsy and fed up with his bullshit. So he turned around and left, and didn’t look back.

Echo talked her into going to the party instead of going home. Clarke doesn’t remember the rest of the night, apart from sitting on the couch at the party with a drink in her hand, fingers hovering over the message button, and asking Bellamy if they could talk.

Bellamy never replied.

Next morning, she phoned Raven, who convinced her into talking to him. Clarke did that and she heard a lot of things – all like daggers straight to her heart.

The worst part was that it didn’t even feel like he cared.

‘I can’t be close with you anymore.’

She fought, a little, and told him she’s not accepting that. He didn’t argue back. They left it somewhat amicably, but Clarke felt like it was over.

In front of him, she didn’t cry. When she walked into her room, her eyes were too blurry for her to see, her knees gave in, and sobs were something she couldn’t prevent.

She doesn’t remember what happened next. All she knows is she fell to the floor and became conscious again sitting with her back against a wall, Raven calming her from a panic attack.

‘It’s over,’ she recalls whispering.

* * *

‘It was over, wasn’t it? Things got better after that and I thought it would last. I really did.’ Clarke rests her head against the back of her couch and stares at the ceiling. It’s an old one, and it has little dots on it, and the dots remind her of the freckles on his face and she almost starts spiralling again.

Clarke shakes her head and looks away. The fire is calming. ‘I can’t let him hurt me anymore.’

The statement takes a while to settle between the two. She can hear Sinclair walking around the house, in the hallway, up the stairs, and closing his door. She can hear the fire and the rain outside, and the shitty weather that comes from being so high up North. Raven’s breathing is quiet, but she can hear it, too, and she can hear her own heartbeat slow down, moment by moment.

‘Do you still love him?’

* * *

It all came crashing down the day before Clarke was supposed to leave for the spring break. Things were bad for the past few days, but Clarke couldn’t think about it. She was busy packing, and it was taking up all her time because she wasn’t coming back to the flat. She’d drive up for the exams and go home, because she missed her mum and quite frankly, she wanted to take a breather from the situation in the flat.

So she didn’t really notice _when_ things took a turn for the worse. She and Bellamy barely spoke, but that was because an art degree took up a lot of time and Clarke really wanted to do well, and packing was a nightmare and she really wanted to do that well, too.

They had their last night out, two days before she and Raven left. It was awful – people tried being friendly but it was all fake, all tiring and exhausting and Clarke didn’t think any of them actually enjoyed it. Bellamy showed up because Murphy did, and the two of them stuck together, and left earlier, presumably to continue the party elsewhere.

Bellamy barely left his room the day after, because Murphy spent the day with Emori.

Clarke didn’t see him.

She asked to speak to him – maybe she said something wrong without noticing. She had been on edge because of the pressure lately, so it must be that.

And then we said: ‘It’s not that.’

She wishes he stopped there. She wishes she could replay the conversation and change it so it doesn’t happen, or that the entirety of last semester doesn’t happen; or at least to not have him list every single thing she had done wrong that semester straight to her face, the day before she leaves.

Almost all were lies she once believed in. Now she knows, but she didn’t know then, and it hurt. She let him change her opinion of reality to coincide with his, where he is the victim and she is the villain, and so is everyone else.

‘I didn’t feel like your friend,’ he said. ‘You were never there for me when I needed you, and Murphy was. ‘

Her heart sank with every sentence he uttered so coldly, with no compassion, yet she sank into a state of numbness. She listened to him list the things and at some point, she tuned out.

It was all _lies_.

He didn’t remember the good things she did for him – waking up at odd hours of the night when his dyslexia would kick in and he couldn’t finish his assignments; buying groceries, making food, cleaning up when he didn’t have the time; walking with him to university when he needed to figure stuff out with going abroad and his scholarship. It gets even worse when she remembers how she’d go to the gym with him whenever he wanted, despite having things to do; staying in the living room or his room for hours on end despite her homework, because she could feel they were getting closer again. Her grades plummeted, her relationships with other people decreased in importance, and she started being very anxious very often.

She sacrificed so much for him and he couldn’t see any of it.

By the end of his speech, he fell quiet. Clarke didn’t know what to say, because she could barely feel. She didn’t know he was holding all that against her.

He was blind to whatever she was feeling, too caught up in his own distress.

So all Clarke said, ‘I want us to still be friends.’

He looked at her and she remembers clearly how empty his face was. There was no remorse, no glimmers of hope that maybe, she’d fight back. He knew she wasn’t going to argue back. In his head, her silence was her agreement with his accusations – in reality, she was quiet because there was nothing she could say to convince him otherwise.

His hair was dry and curls so long they almost covered his eyes, and it looked like a wet mop. He’d lost weight and his face became spotty, and he was a shell of himself.

All Clarke wanted to do was reach out and make him feel better. Hold his hand, listen to what’s bothering him – but he just told her.

Things that bothered him were lies he’d told himself for whatever reason.

The only hand she should be holding in a situation like this is her own.

Bellamy looked her straight in the eyes. She didn’t recognize the boy behind them.

‘There’s no point,’ he said. ‘We can’t be friends anymore.’

* * *

‘I don’t think the person I love exists anymore.’

* * *

Life moves on. Clarke realises this at some point during third year, when he doesn’t dream about him anymore. She doesn’t see him in earth-coloured tees, curly hair, freckles, or defined jaws. Walking down the paths they’d taken doesn’t make her hand reach for his. Listening to songs that once made her heart break doesn’t hurt. She can go into the mens section of a clothing store to buy something for Wells and not fall apart at seeing something he’d wear.

She learns to love again. Herself first, and everyone else second.

Breathing feels different when she comes back to university for fourth year. Third year is when she experiences university as Clarke and not _Clarke and Bellamy_ for the first time. She makes friends with different people, and keeps in touch with the ones from before, too. She joins the art society and the debate society and things get easier, day by day.

Raven sticks around, and so does Echo, surprisingly. She doesn’t see much of Murphy for the first term, but he’s at a party in early February, and Clarke comes to realise she doesn’t resent him, at all. It was never his fault. So she comes up to him, apologises, and to her surprise, he does the same.

Murphy, alongside Raven, becomes her closest friend at university.

Bellamy doesn’t keep in touch with anyone during his year abroad in Ireland, and Clarke doesn’t think anyone is surprised. It helps them move on from all the chaos.

Life doesn’t just move on – life becomes better once you start living it.

Third year makes Clarke realise for the first two years, she lived according to Bellamy’s rules and lifestyle. It makes her realise just how better off she is without him.

For the first time, Clarke understands what happiness is.

She loves herself, first and foremost, more than she ever loved him.

So when fourth year rolls around, Clarke is _good_. She is confident and bold and she isn’t hiding in anyone’s shadow. She is her own person and she knows what she wants in life, and she knows, more than anything, this wouldn’t be the case if she stuck with Bellamy, or if she didn’t know him at all. Because of that, she is grateful for what happened between them.

Bellamy is in the past.

However, past always catches up.

It’s late October and Clarke is sitting on a bench in the university park, sketching it for one of her classes. Usually, she enjoys the sounds of nature, but the campus is busy and people are constantly walking by and chatting and Clarke is just _tired._ The fact that she got very little sleep last night isn’t helping.

She doesn’t notice anything until she sees a silhouette out of the corner of her eye. That’s fine, she thinks, there aren’t that many free benches. It’s not the most unusual thing.

So Clarke continues to sketch. Her lines are curved and then straight and thin and thick and her hand flows over the paper as if it were water. The movements in her wrist belong to the depths of her soul, and she feels herself healing.

‘Clarke, hey.’

Her head turns around and she freezes. Her heart stops, too, and her fingers slip and ruin the whole sketch.

‘Bellamy.’

Slowly, she pops out the earbuds, eyes locked with his.

She should’ve registered his voice, but she hasn’t, because it has gotten even deeper. There was an accent to the way he said her name, so much more melodic than before.

He doesn’t look like the Bellamy he used to know. The curls are almost gone, replaced by slightly shorter hair pushed back, and his jaw framed by slight scruff. His cheekbones hollowed out and his face seems longer, freckles a little more prominent, but he looks more lively than Clarke’s ever seen him.

His eyes are the most alive. They aren’t plagued by dark circles anymore, instead they are bright and clear and only showing a little nervousness.

For a moment, she wonders if she still has his freckles memorised; the way he scrunches his nose, or rolls his eyes, or huffs at her.

Or if that was replaced as soon as he turned his back on her before she even realised he’d done that, and these things became signs of his disapproval of her as a person.

‘I’m sorry for showing up out of the blue.’

There’s been far too many Bellamy’s she’s known.

Clarke puts her pencil down, turns her music off. ‘It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.’

His eyes search for something in hers. He doesn’t smile, even though she thinks he would. ‘It’s been a while since we last spoke.’

‘A year and a half, give or take.’

‘Yeah. A while.’

For a few moments, no one says anything. Clarke keeps looking at him, noticing the little details that have changed, and he looks away. People chatter, filling the silence, and this time she’s grateful.

Her hand no longer aches for his, and neither does her heart.

Bellamy turns his gaze to her and he seems insecure; scared. ‘I know a lot of things went down that time, and I’d completely understand if you said no. But I was wondering if you’d like to grab some coffee, catch up?’

‘I have to go to a seminar in fifteen minutes,’ Clarke says.

‘That’s fine,’ he replies, hurriedly, as if trying to catch the last train. ‘It doesn’t have to be now. Or today. Or this week.’

Clarke looks away. Her fingers are a little cold and she fiddles with them while her mind tries to work out what’s happening.

‘I don’t know,’ she says, quietly, and it’s the truth.

‘Look, Clarke, I’m not asking for forgiveness. I just want to… to talk. That’s it. See how you’re doing. What you’ve been up to.’ She turns her head and looks at him, and _knows_ he’s saying the truth. ‘I’m not going to lie, Clarke. I’ve missed you. Last year has given me a lot to think about.’

This is it and Clarke knows that. This is where she can choose if she wants to forget what happened between them – the fresh start she once so desperately wanted. Or, alternatively, she could show him you can’t always come crawling to the person you hurt and be welcomed with open arms.

‘Please,’ he says.

Letting Bellamy back in her life even for just a coffee date has the potential to shatter everything she has worked so hard on becoming. It’s not a decision she’s going to take easily.

Fuck, even the fact that he’s _here_ in the first place is difficult enough to comprehend.

So instead of giving an answer, Clarke packs her things and gets up from the bench. ‘I need to head to my seminar, but I’ll let you know.’

‘Thanks,’ Bellamy replies, and she somehow knows even this was more than he expected.

Clarke leaves without a goodbye, or looking back.

She spends the seminar thinking about it, and when she goes to the same park after class, she half-expects to find him there, still sitting on the same bench. Her plan is to go there and continue sketching, and she tries, but it doesn’t seem to work anymore.

Now, the sketch reminds her of him, and it’s already ruined anyway. Instead, she decides to go for a walk around campus and let her thoughts wander.

At the end of the second semester of their second year, when all exams were finished and a long summer was ahead, Clarke made peace with never seeing Bellamy as a friend again. In her head, that included not seeing him again, period. It was almost as if he was erased from her mind as an active living, human being, instead placed away in a box as a memory she’d rather forget.

Seeing him today was almost like having a dead person come to life. She buried him. She mourned him, or the person she loved.

Clarke never thought she’d see him again. Now, she can see how foolish that was, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.

In the past year, she has changed a lot. She has certainly matured, as have all her friends – even Murphy, which is saying enough. They've all been through some shitty situations. Raven had to move once Sinclair died and she became essentially homeless, Murphy had an alcohol problem, and Clarke herself was put on anxiety medication. They’ve dealt with all of that, one way or the other. They’re not kids anymore.

Maybe Bellamy isn’t, either.

Maybe she wouldn’t be giving a second chance at all, but a first chance for a person she hardly recognises. Another Bellamy to get to know, another Bellamy to add up to the person in her head.

So when she messages him, not even two hours since he approached her, Clarke knows she is doing the right thing. She is choosing to be the bigger person – to give understanding, even if not to forgive.

Maybe the Bellamy she once knew didn’t need to be mourned after all.

After this, change doesn’t come quickly. Things between them take a while and that’s the way they both understand needs to be. They meet up once a week, at first, until Clarke realises he has changed; he doesn’t resent her anymore.

In fact, that’s one of the first things he says to her when they meet up for coffee: ‘I am sorry for the way I treated you before we fell out. I was scared of losing my friends to people who weren’t worthy of them, and I pushed you away so I wouldn’t lose you, too.’

He doesn’t elaborate, and Clarke doesn’t forgive. But she understands. And he says it’s all that matters; all he could want from her.

Change is slow, and it takes time for them to become friends again. It feels almost as if they don’t know each other at first, or as if they’re expecting the other to be someone who no longer exists.

Clarke learns to trust him again. She is older now, more resilient, and more confident. Even if he started treating her the same, this time, she’d fight back.

He doesn’t, though. If anything, Bellamy is gentler and kinder and more understanding than ever before, and he smiles and laughs more, and he doesn’t feel as jaded.

‘It was my stepdad,’ he explains, once they’re friends again. ‘There was shit going on at home that I didn’t feel like sharing, and I still haven’t really told anyone about it, but you deserve to know. He was pressuring me into becoming who I wasn’t, and when I couldn’t be that person, I started hating myself. And I took it out on you.’

They’re sitting in her living room, as Raven is away for the weekend and so is Murphy. She still hasn’t brought him into their old life and it doesn’t feel like he wants that, either.

Change takes time – even if it’s just things going back to the way they used to be.

‘I was trying to help you,’ she says, a mug filled with tea warming her hands. ‘I could see you were going through some shit, we all did.’

‘I didn’t want your help. I was young and dumb and too full of pride to be so vulnerable.’

Clarke laughs. It lightens the mood a little. ‘You were dumb, that’s for sure.’

When Bellamy smiles, Clarke feels a little lighter. She hasn’t seen him smile so openly, honestly, with nothing holding him back, since the first year.

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

Again, Clarke understands where he’s coming from, and this is the first time she feels she might be able to forgive him. It’s in the past now, after all, whatever happened between them – they’re not those people anymore.

Time goes by and for Clarke’s birthday, she finally brings him back to his old circle. The reception is less than warm, but they aren’t rude, either. Clarke has told them about the way things have been, and how he’s different, and she hopes they can see it, too.

‘Be careful, Clarke,’ Raven tells her after the party. ‘He doesn’t seem like the same person from second year.’

‘Isn’t that a good thing?’

Raven shrugs. ‘How many times can a person change until they’re no longer the same person? Besides, I’ll never forget how crushed you were after you guys would argue and it’s something I’ll never forgive.’

When Raven says that, Clarke realises one thing – she has already forgiven him.

It doesn’t come up until just before winter break, when she and Bellamy went to a pub for the first time, and got drunk together for the first time. Up until the very last place they were planning to go to, things were great. Blissful. They were laughing and enjoying themselves and Clarke realised she has missed this.

When Bellamy gets their last drink and takes a seat across from her, he doesn’t look happy.

‘I keep beating myself up over treating you like that.’

‘Bellamy—’

‘Give me a moment, okay?’ He looks at her and he’s pleading with those eyes, and he looks broken enough. ‘Please.’

So she nods and takes a sip of her drink instead.

‘I kept seeing you with other people and I thought you’d leave me, too. It felt like everyone has already given up on me, with full right, because I was an asshole. I was lost and confused and I couldn’t stand what was happening. I couldn’t understand why I was feeling that way.’

Bellamy buries his face in his hands, just for a moment. Clarke doesn’t feel like it’s her turn to talk, so she doesn’t.

She wonders where he’s headed and she realises she knows.

When he puts his hands away and she can see his eyes clearly, there are tears in them. His face is painted with guilt, and it hurts her to see him like that, too.

‘I knew you liked me, because you told me once when you were too drunk to remember.’

Clarke’s throat dries up. She swallows, hard, and gulps down a big sip for that.

Still, she doesn’t feel like it’s her turn to speak.

‘I didn’t know how to deal with that. I couldn’t lose you, and I always thought that maybe I’d start feeling something for you, too. Later. But then you moved on, started dating other people. I felt like I lost you.’ Bellamy chuckles, but it’s saddening. ‘You were my safety net and it was shitty of me to treat you that way. So I got hurt, and I tried pushing you away, but you never left – until there was no coming back.’

Clarke’s drink is almost empty and she feels lightheaded, but it’s far from the alcohol’s fault.

‘I’m sorry. I ended our friendship because I thought you deserved better and I couldn’t deal with my own feelings for you.’

The confession between the lines is all too obvious for Clarke, and all she can say is – ‘I need some air.’

So she leaves the place, with him behind, and sits just outside the door. It’s freezing even in her winter coat, but everything is better than being inside. Her thoughts are incomprehensible and her head is spinning, and she spews on the pavement and begins to cry.

Her throat begins to choke her, but she knows this. She’s been through this.

On her own. Without him.

Bellamy, who had feelings for her, too. Pushed her away because of them.

He resented her because he loved her.

Clarke spews again. It’s not a pretty sight.

When he comes out, he doesn’t ask about the pile of vomit in front of her, or why her breathing seems a little erratic and uneven. Instead, he takes her by the hand and pulls her into a hug, and Clarke realises that’s exactly what she needed.

Somehow, at some point, they reverted back to understanding each other’s needs without expressing them.

Clarke doesn’t cry, but it feels as if there’s an ocean of tears trapped within her heart.

‘I didn’t move on,’ she whispers, because anything more would hurt. ‘When you thought I moved on, I was trying to, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t leave you because I loved you too much to let go. Until I couldn’t take it anymore.’

His hug tightens. Her head begins to spin again, and he keeps her steady. ‘I’m sorry. I am an asshole.’

Clarke shakes her head. ‘You _were o_ ne _._ But you were good and kind before that. And I thought you could be that again.’

‘Am I?’

‘I don’t know. I think so.’ She buries her head in her neck and finds her home there. ‘You’re better.’

He doesn’t let her go. ‘I could never ask you to forgive me for what I’ve done.’

‘If you want forgiveness, Bellamy, I’ll give that to you.’ Finally, they part, and Clarke looks at him to find his face glistening on the street light. There’s tears smeared all over his face, and he looks the kind of vulnerable he always refused to be. ‘I’ve forgiven you a long time ago.’

The corners of his lips rise upwards, just the slightest bit. ‘You have?’

Clarke nods. She pushes stray curls out of his face, out of his eyes, and she remembers how much she liked to see the freckles dottted all around them. ‘You’re not the same person who hurt me anymore.’

‘Thank you,’ Bellamy whispers, and kisses the top of her head. ‘Let’s go home now.’

They don’t talk about what they confessed and Clarke thinks it’s for the best. There is a question she could tell was lingering on Bellamy’s mind, and she can tell it’s still there.

_Do you love me, still?_

She doesn’t have the answer.

Not then, not after the break, and not when they leave for their last short break before their seminars are over and their final exams and dissertations are due.

She has the answer once studying commences and everything begins to fall apart again. Somehow, the only thing that appears to be intact is her and Bellamy’s friendship.

‘I have to work on my portfolio,’ Clarke would say.

‘I’ll study with you,’ Bellamy would reply.

The two of them, in either Bellamy’s small studio apartment twenty minutes from campus, or Clarke’s flat. Raven and Murphy don’t mind him anymore, and they’ve started warming up to him, too. There’s always forgiveness, even if it comes in little pieces. This becomes a tradition and within a week, they don’t ask if they’re going to study together – they just do. Clarke realises her portfolio has been filled with a lot of details of her friends, but Bellamy occupies most of it. Sketches of working hands; freckles on a shapeless face; jawlines and silhouettes that she can’t deny belong to him; his eyes, the exact same ones she hoped she’d once find love in.

He’s sitting on the couch, across from her. It’s a small couch and their legs found a way to be on it together and comfortably, intertwined. She can feel his warmth; she can hear the sound of his steady breath, mind lost in concentration on the history book he’s reading.

Clarke looks at her sketch, the one she’s currently sketching, and can’t deny the resemblance in the curls. The angle of the head tilt and the shape of the lips, even if the eyes aren’t present.

She can never get his eyes right, anymore. She can’t get the brown shade to not look so…dull? It’s almost as if it’s Bellamy’s eyes that make him _Bellamy_. She can draw a hundred of detailed sketches of his jaw, his cheekbones, his dimples, or curls, and while they will resemble him, they won't _feel_ like him.

His eyes possess all the knowledge and the brightness, and what the characters in Dark Academia would be if they were a little less dark. He’s dishevelled but he’s also put together in a way most people aren’t, built from experience and regret and the ability to strive to be better.

Watching him, now, as he purses his lips with a pen in between them and his fingers trailing the most important sentences and paragraphs in the book, Clarke understands him.

She realises that until now, she never has. She had a vision of who she thought he was versus who he pretended to be, but this is the first time she looks at him and understands what makes him Bellamy Blake, and not anyone else.

Clarke almost says it there, and then.

She doesn’t. A few days later, Bellamy beats her to it.

They’re studying, again, and this time it’s in his bedroom and he’s sprawled on the bed while she’s fixing the little details on the past artworks in her portfolio.

She’s sitting by the window and soft, golden light is falling onto her graphite-smudged pages. One of them is playing music on Spotify but Clarke doesn’t know which one anymore.

‘What happens when we graduate?’

Clarke puts her pencil down and turns around on the chair, wrapping her legs around the back of it. Her hair, now cut short to her shoulders, falls into her face a little.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean,’ Bellamy says. He’s lying on the bed with his legs crossed at the ankles, a heavy history book on his lap and a tiny notebook at his side. His face is indecipherable. ‘Your plan is to try and get a job at an art gallery, or a publishing house. My plan is to continue studying, until I can teach. Where do we fit in?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.’

_Where do we fit in?_ is a question Clarke truly hasn’t thought about. A few months ago, she thought she was done with Bellamy for good. Her life path was clear, because staying in touch with Raven and Murphy, who also want to get jobs in their fields in the same city, would be simple. Manageable, if not simple. With Bellamy deciding to move across the country for his Masters, things get difficult.

She didn’t think it was that important.

Now, though, looking at him, she can tell it means a lot more to him than it does to her. She knows that one way or another, they’ll find a way, stick it out. She hasn’t considered that maybe he doesn’t see it the same way.

And he confirms it. ‘I lost you once already.’

‘Bellamy—’

‘I don’t want to lose you again. I can’t.’

‘It was your choice, remember?’ It’s a low blow and Clarke is aware, but he also needs to hear it. ‘You forced me out of your life and you can’t blame it on anything else. I never wanted us to fall out or grow apart, it was all you. On my end, things would’ve worked. Do you understand where I’m coming from?’

He’s quiet, saying nothing, and even his chest seems to move at a slower speed. She notices his hands begin to shake, moments before he hides them beneath his armpits.

‘Not really.’

Clarke sighs, because _obviously_. ‘I want to stay in touch. Remain friends. If that’s what you want, too, there shouldn’t be a problem. We will find a way.’

She watches him and almost sees the weight that is lifted off his chest. He smiles, once he realises she is being serious, that they have a future, and Clarke realises she loves him in that moment more than ever.

Maybe they do mean to each other as much as he means to her. Maybe she didn’t realise he thought that she wouldn’t want to be friends with him and that’s why he was scared.

Maybe he doesn’t want to lose her just as much as she couldn’t bear to lose him.

Again.

She stays until late because they end up just talking about the most random, hypothetical things, and Clarke loves that part of her study days. Every worry melts away and it’s just the two of them, and the world feels safe again.

It’s after dinner, and it’s after a bottle of beer each, that the conversation gets deep. It goes back to the big fallout and back to the way each of them felt, and Clarke realises she still finds it very difficult to talk about.

But if it helps Bellamy, she can let him talk.

He hands her the second bottle and she gets right on it, and so does he. His curls are longer than they were in October and the beard is gone, and he looks a little more like the Bellamy she knew in first year. There’s no malice in his eyes, or the dark circles underneath them like in second year.

This is a new Bellamy. Another one she’s gotten to know, and the first one she accepts being in love with as a good thing.

He’s the Bellamy that would never hurt her, intentionally. A mature Bellamy.

She doesn’t know it’s also the Bellamy that accepts being in love with her, too, until he says it.

‘Two years ago, I pushed you away because I loved you,’ he says, quietly, as if they’re she’s the only person in the world who can hear. He doesn’t look her in the eye. ‘I won’t make the same mistake again.’

Clarke wonders. She wonders about the meaning of his words, about the soft music playing in the background, about the way the stars shine brightly here than from her windows.

She doesn’t wonder for long.

Bellamy looks up and they lock eyes, and she finally understands why she could never put them on paper correctly. She was scared of getting hurt and believing things that could easily be untrue, and she didn’t let herself see the truth in them.

The glistening of something other than friendship; the crinkle in the bottom of the right lid that comes with a smile she hasn’t yet learned the meaning of; the softness of the corners when he looks at her, and her only.

She knows he loves her, still.

So she looks away.

‘I should probably get going.’ The bottle in her hand is empty, anyway. When she looks at him, he isn’t looking at her that way again. ‘We can talk about this when everything’s over.’

He doesn’t oppose. The stars seem a little dimmed once she looks at them again, and the music from her phone seems a little less lively. Still, everything is over sooner than she anticipates, and the two are at a pub with Raven and Murphy, and Echo and Monty and Jasper and everyone they once hung out with is back together again.

They haven’t talked about it again, and when they do, Bellamy follows her when Clarke says she needs to take some air.

‘It’s just stress,’ she tells him. ‘My anxiety has been a little worse lately.’

Bellamy takes her hand and she feels a little more grounded than she did a moment ago. He doesn’t say anything.

Neither does she, for a bit. It feels quiet; safe. The stars are out tonight and they are bright, and she wonders if he notices that, too. Somehow, she has a feeling he does.

They’re not drunk, either of them. They’re not even tipsy.

‘I love you. That’s what I was trying to say the other day,’ Bellamy says. He squeezes her hand, lightly, and she revels in its warmth. Her eyes are glued to the stars. ‘I don’t expect you to say anything, really. I was just thinking about how much of an asshole I’ve been to you and how much I couldn’t bear to lose you again, but I thought you deserved to know. I’ve loved you for a while, but the feelings came back in full strength when we became friends again. When you forgave me. When I stopped hating myself for what I’ve done.’

Bellamy’s thumb strokes the back of her palm in a rhythm way too similar to the one of her heart. It’s soothing, and all too familiar. She still can’t look at him and she hopes he’s not looking at her, either – she doesn’t want him to see her lip quivering, or the tears at the bottom of her waterline threatening to fall out.

When she says nothing, Bellamy continues. ‘Ever since you told me you didn’t stop loving me when I thought you did, I’ve been thinking about it. About all the possibilities. About when you could’ve stopped loving me. And honestly, there’s way too many options for that one.’ He chuckles, a little, and Clarke’s hand is squeezed again. ‘The tiniest part of me that still has hope wonders if you love me still.’

He doesn’t word it the way she expected him to, but he words it close enough. And she does have an answer this time.

It’s an answer he deserves to know.

‘I do.’

She says it quietly, almost inaudibly, and she feels Bellamy turn to her. When she looks at him, he looks almost heartbroken. He doesn’t know what’s about to happen, he didn’t hear her, and it might have just as well been a no. He bared his heart for her and Clarke has a feeling he’s never done it before.

Bellamy is not a feelings person. When he is, it’s all or nothing.

A little louder this time, Clarke says, ‘I do.’

He gives and gets the all tonight.

‘I love you, still.’

Bellamy moves slowly and she stays in place, frozen – watches him close the distance between them and push the unruly hair out of her face. His hands remain on her cheeks and his warmth makes her eyelids flutter, just the tiniest bit. His gaze drops to her lips and she inhales a sharp, quick breath.

She has dreamt about this moment for two years, and then pushed it away for one. Within the last few months, it came back, haunting her as a memory that never became one.

He is soft, when he kisses her. Careful and savouring the moment, and she is the same. Her hands are on his waist and his are still on her cheeks, and they seem to fit together in a way she never thought they could.

It’s like his eyes when he looks at her – there are simply some things that only exist in the moment.

When they part, before either of them can say anything, Bellamy kisses her again. It’s a little less reserved and more filled with the same longing she’s felt for years, and there is something so primal, so right about the whole thing that Clarke starts feeling dizzy.

He steps back with alarm on his face, but when she smiles and squeezes his hand hanging by his hips, he relaxes.

They don’t talk, for a while. They join their friends again not long after, and no one notices the shift. The world is still spinning on the same axis, even if Clarke doesn’t feel it.

When Bellamy walks her home and asks if she’d like him to kiss her again, part of her wants to just go for it. But there is something about him asking the questions and her answering with ‘I do’ that is special. It’s the verbal acknowledgement of the feeling they’ve both felt for years now, and Clarke doesn’t think she’ll ever get enough of it.

Many ‘I do’s later, there’s the one at the altar, and Clarke still thinks the same.

**Author's Note:**

> happy new year! hope you enjoyed it. writing truly is a way to heal, honestly, and get over some heavy shit. bless whoever invented it. i'm also slightly tipsy so i apologise for any typos/mistakes/absolutely shitty writing. 
> 
> also, i'm back on tumblr babey, find me on [bellarkesgodson](https://bellarkesgodson.tumblr.com/)


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